Herds shrink in Bastar, Maria bison horn dancers adapt

It is a moonlit evening and I can hear the waters of Bastar’s Chitrakote waterfall crashing into the Indravati river under. Out of the blue, it’s damaged by the beats of the cylindrical mandar drum and the melody of the flute. The beats develop louder as the male and the female dancers go in a neat procession. The guys enjoy the mandar, whilst the gals have a extended iron pole, the gujri, with which they strike the ground rhythmically as they go forward.
The visually lively gaur or bison horn dance done by the Dandami Maria tribe of south Bastar has started at the adventure camp website at Tiratha, which provides a majestic check out of Chitrakote. The girls are dressed in maroon saris with black borders and put on headbands designed of cowrie shells and a pink fabric named pattari. The gentlemen use elaborate headgear, kokh, adorned with cowrie shells, gleaming chook feathers and bison horns.
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The bison horn dance is portion of the Dandami Maria indigenous community’s customs to pay out tribute to this wonderful creature—but the irony is that the animal is hardly ever witnessed in this location now. Deforestation and habitat transform have intended the bison has moved away from Bastar.



Male Maria dancers have on elaborate headgear, kokh, adorned with cowrie shells, hen feathers and bison horns.
(Deepanwita Gita Niyogi)

“The horns utilised for the kokh come from the Indian gaur or bison. We rarely see it in this article in Bastar now. If we are fortunate adequate, we have noticed it in Bijapur district (about 180km absent). Most of the headgear we use for the performances are about a decade old and have been preserved diligently,” suggests Renuram Kashyap, who potential customers the dance troupe. He life in Anjar village, about 24km away from the campsite.
Inside Kashyap’s house in Anjar, a mandar and two sets of the headgears rest towards a inexperienced wall. Only 10 households in the village even now very own the male headgear. Manish Panigrahi of Unexplored Bastar, a vacation startup, points out that in the earlier, collectors and vacationers obtained the headgear from Maria villages. Without having bison horns to make new headgear and a more youthful technology disinterested in the dance, the artwork variety has much less practitioners, he claims.
Two dancers Dalgo Kashyap and Bijaybai Kashyap are practising for a performance in the courtyard. Dalgo suggests he learnt the dance, usually performed at melas and weddings, when he was a teen. Bijaybai, who also learnt it as a teen, says she’s taught it to about 15 women in Anjar.
As they transfer gracefully, they describe that the cowrie shells, anklets, necklaces and bouquets that adorn the heads of guys and women of all ages for the duration of the performances are purchased from the nearby markets. The feathers at the prime of the headdress belong to the beemar fowl or the bigger racket-tailed drongo. This fowl also is now hardly ever viewed as men and women would capture it to pluck out the coveted feathers. The feathers of the rooster are now a alternative for the drongo’s tail feathers. Ox or buffalo horns or wood are a substitution for gaur horns on the headdress.



Bijaybai Kashyap and Dalgo Kashyap outside their dwelling in Anjar village in Bastar, Chhattisgarh.
(Deepanwita Gita Niyogi)

The dancers, who utilised to obtain the horns from lifeless animals, say they use other supplies as they want to hold the art type alive. Retired anthropologist Ashok Tiwari, who life in Raipur, details with admiration to the techniques the dancers have adapted. “They make new headgear out of wood, in addition to using horns from ox or buffaloes. Picket ones are attaining prominence,” he says. Modifications to the environment may perhaps have led to a reduction in bison figures but these kinds of cultural procedures preserve alive the memory of what the location was like, he clarifies.
District Forest Officer Ashok Patel claimed bison can be noticed in the Indravati Tiger Reserve in Bijapur district. “It is legitimate that the Indian bison is diminishing in range and their habitat is shrinking. The core space of Indravati, on the other hand, is undisturbed and has a excellent variety of bisons,” reported Patel, including that bison could be observed on roadsides about a 10 years back.
The 2018 Wildlife Institute of India report, Tigers, Co-predators and Prey in India, mentions that Indravati was meagrely sampled due to the armed insurgency. Deputy Director of the Indravati tiger reserve Devendra Kumar Mehar said that cases of searching and poaching in the 1980s decreased bison quantities, “and right after that the Maoist problem cropped up”. The grasslands of the Indravati are a ideal habitat for the bison and camera traps have revealed the presence of 70-75 gaurs here and 50-52 wild buffaloes in the core zone, he says.
Budhram Kawasi, a resident of the nearby Madarkonta village, suggests little ones haven’t shown substantially fascination in mastering the dance. “Many younger people have to migrate to towns in search of positions and get disconnected from their tradition,” he suggests.
The recreational methods in Adivasi modern society have also transformed in the very last couple yrs. People today are glued to mobile phones for leisure. “Children are also hectic with college and skip these cultural conferences,” points out Piyush Ranjan Sahoo of the Anthropological Survey of India, sub-regional centre, Chhattisgarh.
Rajeev Ranjan Prasad, an unbiased researcher who has authored publications on Bastar, points out that cultural alterations have crept into the tribal society in Bastar and migration has taken location due to the Maoist presence. “A culture sings and dances only when it lives peacefully. The tribals have very little to do with naxalism. Their interference has performed havoc with Bastar’s culture,” he states.
Bastar collector Rajat Bansal agrees that several tribal dance sorts, which includes the gaur dance, are disappearing as there was no space to practise and doc them. “It’s only when young people have the place to learn that this kind of traditions are handed on to the future era. That’s wherever Badal or the Bastar Academy of Dance, Artwork and Language that the main minister inaugurated in October arrives in,” he says. Located just outside the district headquarters of Jagdalpur, 50 {99d7ae7a5c00217be62b3db137681dcc1ccd464bfc98e9018458a9e2362afbc0} of the academy is devoted to dance and has different services for outdoor classes, which is acceptable for this sort of artwork types, as effectively as altering rooms and an open-air auditorium. “At Badal, all types of tribal dances will be documented, and courses and certification programmes of different length organised. Outsiders can also come and learn and that is how tribal dances will distribute within just tribes as effectively as among the outsiders.”
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Deepanwita Gita Niyogi is a Delhi-primarily based journalist.